Money extremes: From spendthrift to tightwad to somewhere in the middle

Many years ago, when I was paying off a car loan and some credit card debt, I became really frugal. Almost obsessively frugal. I looked for every possible way to save money, and I dreaded ever having to spend money.

Then one morning my husband accidently broke our coffee carafe. I helped him clean up the glass and caught myself feeling anxious about having to buy a new carafe. How much was that gonna cost?

As it turned out, only $12. That’s when I knew I had swung too far in the tightwad direction. I’d gone from not really being in control of my money to being a control freak. And it was making me miserable.

From one money extreme to the other

Before I educated myself about personal finance (starting with GRS, actually!), I never tracked how much I was spending. When my credit card bill arrived each month, I had no idea how high or low it was going to be. If it was low, whew! I could relax. If it was high, I’d buckle down for a few months and pay it off. Then I’d continue with my previous spend-now-worry-later habit.

Opening the credit card bill was pretty stressful back then. Here’s what I wrote almost five years ago about that period of my life: “My stomach dropped as I looked at the balance, added the expenditures in my head, and realized that yes, it was correct. The bank didn’t make a mistake. I bought that stuff.”

Eventually, I started learning about emergency funds and the real cost of paying interest. As I followed J.D.’s story, I slowly started to get my own financial life in order. I saved a small emergency fund first; then I started to tackle my debt.

Being type-A, though, I felt like I had failed in the personal finance area of my life. So I wanted to pay off my debt as soon as humanly possible. I wanted it gone, erased from my credit report and erased from my life. I dreamed of the day when everything would be paid in full.

But somewhere along the way, I started to get anxious about spending money. I worried that I wasn’t getting the best deal. I beat myself up because I’m terrible at clipping coupons and remembering to use them. I’d read frugal blogs and kick myself if the writer DIYed something that I just bought. Spending was making me miserable.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being frugal. But replacing a $12 carafe shouldn’t ruin your morning, you know? I didn’t want to live like that any more than I wanted to dread the credit card bill every month.

I needed to find middle ground.

April in the middle

I didn’t find that balance right away, of course. It took time to (mostly) make my peace with spending and saving. So today I thought I’d share what this more balanced approach looks like for me.

Here are my spending guidelines and how I approach spending these days:

I only spend money I have — meaning, no credit card balances … ever. I pay off my rewards card at the end of every month. This action alone alleviates a ton of money-related stress.

I spend guiltlessly on things that are important to me. For instance, I greatly value my family’s health. So I’m okay with the fact that we pay a lot for grass-fed, organic what-have-you. I’m okay with our gym dues and paying for yoga classes. It feels good to spend money on the things we value.

We indulge sometimes. I like the Balanced Money Formula a lot, which leaves room for indulgences like eating out and, in our case, hiring a housekeeper to clean our house twice a month. Uber-frugal me would never, ever, not in a million years, hire a housekeeper. But it is actually more affordable than I thought and, for me, it’s been life-changing. Between cleaning sessions, the house requires very little upkeep, and this means we’re always ready for company. I enthusiastically pay my housekeeper. She’s amazing.

Here are my saving guidelines and my more balanced approach to saving money:

We have an emergency fund. Right now, it would get us by for at least a year. That’s probably a little too much for an emergency fund; but we sold some land recently, and I still need to figure out what we’ll owe in taxes and then set that aside and move the rest of the funds.

We contribute to Roth IRAs. Knowing that we’re saving for retirement and that we have an emergency cushion helps me feel less guilty about spending money elsewhere. I don’t have to worry about what we can spend if we take care of savings first.

I comparison-shop for the bigger stuff. If it is an expensive purchase, like the refrigerator we had to buy last year, I spend a fair amount of time sorting through reviews, looking for the best deals, and Googling coupon codes. But researching like that for something like a $12 carafe? I have to let that go. It keeps me more sane.

I do a quick gut-check. Before I buy most things, I take a little timeout. Do I really like/need/want this? Do I already have something that works just as well? Could I make it myself? For instance, I recently planned a baby shower for a friend. I saw these neat tissue paper tassels I wanted, but they were $30. Spending $30 for something I wouldn’t reuse bothered me. So I Googled “how to make tissue paper tassels,” and I made my own in about 30 minutes with an extra $3 worth of supplies.

I lower our bills as much as possible. I love to save money on property taxes, insurance, cell phone plans, and other expenses that I can lower without feeling a pinch. This also can include things like cutting subscriptions and memberships you no longer use and refinancing your mortgage when rates drop.

Of course, this is just what works for me, and one of my favorite GRS tenets is to do what works for you. You might be more frugal than I am; and if you are perfectly happy that way, that’s great! I’d probably be envious of how much you save. Or maybe you think protesting your property taxes is a waste of time, and you’d rather focus on increasing your salary. I wouldn’t necessarily disagree.

So, readers, let me know in the comments: Have you ever been at a spending or saving extreme? What does balance look like to you?

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This post made me smile because I think a lot of us can see ourselves in it :)

The biggest challenge for me wasn’t living frugally so I could pay off my student debt, it was learning to find some balance afterwards. I would learn to “lighten up” only to have a tightwad relapse if a job loss threatened or if I felt like I was getting too comfortable (as in, when will the other shoe drop?)

For example, my kettle broke and I picked up a new one on sale — I spent the money without thinking twice. Does that mean I’ve attained a certain level of financial security, or that I’m taking things for granted? There have been times in my life where I would have thought “do I need a kettle? I could just boil water in a pot on the stove.”

I’m glad you’re finding some balance April. After my own struggles with credit repair and getting back to the black I relate with the difficulty of spending in a ‘normal’ fashion- though a new normal.

For me the easiest way to feel ok with spending again is to have a proper budget. If my emergency fund is stocked, I’m saving enough for retirement, and my bills are paid then I simply do not worry about how I spend the money I have set aside each month. Spend it on food, clothes, magic beans or booze; it’s ok.

I just try not to spend more than budgeted in any given month. And if you do hopefully it’s offset by a month where you spend less than allocated. Mint and other online budgeting tools make it very easy now to track spending over time, so you can see how you’re doing for the year, not just right now. This 10,000 foot view also helps to limit stressing over individual purchases, while keeping me on track.

My husband is all or nothing with spending. To fix his spending so that it wasn’t everything and miserable or nothing and miserable we set up an adult allowance for him for frivolous purchases. It has worked really well! (We have a post on it somewhere in our archives, but that paragraph pretty much sums it up.)

I’m much better at buying in moderation, and yes, adjusting to lifestyle inflation or deflation.

I did this for my husband too. He has a separate checking account that he uses for whatever he wants. It amounts to about 10% of his paycheck, which is probably less than 3% of our combined take home pay. This system works well for us.

Great post April. We have been in debt snowball mode for over 4 years, so we have fell more on the tightwad side, but as we are getting ready to have a budget surplus we have been think of how we will handle. The one thing I keep reminding myself is to still have a plan. Being organized will help us find our balance.

Brian, you hit it on the head! Having a plan is key to success in any endeavor, be it career advancement, retirement planning, vacation planning, etc. It doesn’t have to be the perfect plan, just a plan. It can be tweaked anytime you want. It’s YOUR plan.

Your best post ever April, IMHO. While I’ve never been an extreme spender, I have purchased some very expensive things that I later realized I could have spent more wisely on or done without.

I have also been generally frugal, with concentrated bursts of extreme frugality. I’ve done a “Spend Nothing” February at least a dozen times. Once I decided to save as hard as I could for an entire year. It was tough, but I chose to do it 2008, as luck would have it. Everything went into investments, and then the market took off. It is the reason I am FIRE today.

Now that my goals have finally been met, I can’t fully explain (without sounding braggish) how awesome it feels not to need to worry about money, budgeting or spending. I just live my life and focus my energy on things like giving back in my community. I wake up happy every day.

P.S. I got a card from my brother yesterday, thanking me for being the most “fiscally responsible” sibling. It could be the nicest compliment I’ve ever received.

Thoughtful post. Thank you. Tightwad or frugal…it’s a matter of mindful spending and saving decisions in both cases, but frugality to me comes from a place of control and fearlessness. I realize some friends see me as a tightwad when I opt out of things (e.g., events and purchases) that don’t fit my budget requirements. I’m willing to live with that label in exchange for peace of mind.

I definitely don’t stress about buying any object that I will use regularly, such as weekly or daily and for many years… i.e. not a fad. I will pay more for a high quality item that will last as long as possible. I feel happier not having a lot of ‘stuff’ around, so I don’t really need to worry about overspending or budgeting. Living simply is the effortless budget for me.

Ugh… tightwad me reared her ugly head my senior year of college! I had taken a PF class over the summer and started reading GRS and The Simple Dollar. I changed light bulbs to CFLs (with some help from one roommate), kept un-cranking the heat (until I was told that another roommate had a medical need to keep the heat higher, not that that ever came up when we were discussing how we could all live together), shopped at the “so cheap we don’t provide you plastic bags” grocery store, rarely went out, got hot water at the dining hall to mix with my hot cocoa, brought dry cereal to classes and got milk for “free” at the dining hall, nabbed jelly packets from the work-study kitchen, turned off my power strip when I went to classes all day, started eating only oatmeal for breakfast (that habit has stuck and turns out I love it), attempted to make my own bread (failed miserably)… it was bad.

My reasoning? I was making maybe $300-$350 a month, my car insurance was $140/month, I paid my share of utilities while my parents were kind enough to pay my rent. I was still able to visit my boyfriend a 2-hour drive way almost every other weekend (I was miserable in the apartment – gee, I wonder why!) – he was making so much more money than me in his internship it was almost laughable, so he paid for everything while I visited.

I’ve wised up since then, but I was still able to put away money each month for a rainy day fund, which made me happy. When I’m stressed now, I can feel that pinch coming back, and it’s really hard to accept that we have plenty of income and a solid savings base so I don’t have to stress about it!

YES!!! that emotion is real, the guilt, the beating over the head that I am spending money, any money! I never thought I would feel guilty about spending money, but once you are on the treadmill of saving, saving, saving, the guilty feeling was quite the surprise.

For me it will be interesting to see if I can break the guilt cycle once I reach all my goals at the end of 2015, or if I find more excuse why I should not spend the money.

I have my eye on a pair of diamond earrings from Costco for $1,700 that I am aiming for at the end of 2015. It will be a gift to myself after a 10 year span of being a supersaver, and will tell me where I am emotionally with money. Because if a pair of earrings is not the most frivolous thing in the world, I donâ€™t know what is.

I love this article because I can relate! Sometimes I feel so stressed out and upset if I find a coupon for something I just bought, like that 50 cents is such a big deal. And to be honest, I’m getting burnt out on always trying to find the best deal. It can sometimes get overwhelming.

I’d love to hear more about the housekeeper. I’ve never had one clean my house and do it all myself, but I’m getting tired of doing it. I even won a $100 gift certificate to Merry Maids but haven’t used it because the idea of a stranger touching my stuff is a big turn off. How did you get over that? And are you home when they come to clean? I’m curious if this is something I should outsource so I can look into using the day off I use to clean to do other things like make money with a side hustle or something.

This is why I have a section of my monthly budget, say $100, set aside for discretionary purchases (in Mint I use the “Everything Else” category.) This is for those things I will buy on a whim and I learned early on that if I didn’t account for it ahead of time then I’d blow my budget every month.

It also doubles as a small opportunity fund for those times when I come across something on clearance or deep-discount and while I don’t need it now I know that I will need it in the near future and sure as hell will be kicking myself when I have to pay full price for it then.

Great article, April! I can definitely relate, esp. the part about feeling the need to research and find the best deal out there before buying an item. That can be a drag so now I limit my research to just the substantial purchases and I’m much happier.

We’re on a frugality kick as we pay off our debts. As time goes by though (it’s been just over two years) this frugality is feeling like a new normal. It would be interesting to compare type A frugal-mode with type B frugal-mode. I’m type B, and I’m willing to bet that I’m less tormented than you were when you were hyper-frugal. I don’t beat myself up for not using coupons, and I don’t compare myself to others who are way better at being frugal. I compare myself as I am now to how I was just a couple of years ago, and I feel good about the progress.
As soon as we’re out of debt though, I’m going to hire house cleaners again. I REALLY miss them!

Loved this post! I definitely agree that sometimes we let money control us. There is definitely a limit to frugal living and worrying in the financial area of our lives. Whenever I need to find a balance between being money savvy and money spender, what I do is that I cut down on my â€œpermittedâ€ budget and review how much I saved by the end of the month. The extra money can either become extra savings (aside from the monthly saving that I already set aside) or small indulgence spending â€“ depending on my mood. We can always cut down on expenses by couponing, buying cheaper products or altering lifestyles (using the public transport over carâ€¦that saved me a hundred bucks once!).

How does one find a good housekeeper? I feel like they’re a myth. Anyone I’ve spoken to in person has had problems with them breaking things, stealing, or being careless and letting pets escape. It’s only online that I hear about these magical unicorn cleaning people.

About comparison shopping: there was a time when I would web-surf tirelessly to cut prices to the bone, but I’ve gotten much more choosy about how I shop due to the hassle of returns. Currently we need new windows, and I’d rather bite the bullet on the price with a local dealer because I want trustworthy installation, a warranty, and quick repair should it be necessary.

While in school I definitely did the tightwad thing, but out of necessity. After getting my first “real job” out of school I suddenly went crazy with spending–at one point I was buying new clothes every week just to avoid doing laundry.

I can laugh about it now, but I remember the pain of seeing a zero balance in my bank account just days after I had been paid.

The thing I had forgotten was that I enjoyed getting a bargain through savvy shopping–in fact, my roommate and I used to compete to see who could spend the LEAST every month.

I went back to shopping at secondhand stores and the thrill I felt when I picked up a never-worn Banana Republic dress for $4 at Goodwill (tags still attached!!!) was totally guilt-free. My mantra now is “champagne taste on a beer budget”

Paying for everything in cash is hard but very rewarding and best way to go, no papertrailes painful but successful. Being indebt will force u to be tight very fast and treat patience. Stick to a budget is the only way out of debt.peace will come

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My name is J.D. Roth. I started Get Rich Slowly in 2006 to document my personal journey as I dug out of debt. Then I shared while I learned to save and invest. Twelve years later, I've managed to reach early retirement! I'm here to help you master your money — and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you get rich slowly. Read more.

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